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Shaddai: a novel for Advent
Jan. 9, 2009
Day 12
The young man knelt down and pressed his palm into the dark, soft earth, then took his finger and pressed a hole through the center of his imprinted hand. The other people around him, tall tanned faces with bright eyes and the wary postures of hand-to-hilt, drew a simultaneous breath and looked at one another. The same thought shot through them all: This man is one of us. He is not afraid to show the Sign to us.
A short balding man wearing a tunic of rough white cotton and walking with the aid of a staff, stepped before the man and held out a wizened wrinkled hand.
“We welcome you, stranger, to our hearts and our homes,” the ancient man said in a surprisingly spry voice. His dark blue eyes twinkled as the young man knelt and took his tunic and rubbed it to his face.
“You have seen the Child, then?” the man whispered once he trusted his voice to speak.
“Yes, myself and many others,” answered the man. The stranger before him, surely no older than twenty snowfalls, gave a convulsive shudder and climbed laboriously to his feet. Several women murmured with concern.
“You are wounded, then,” said the man. It was a more of a statement than a question. The midnight blue eyes grew sad. “Why have you come to our dangers, our community of broken bodies and sorely pierced spirits to put yourself in greater peril? We must know where your heart lies, stranger.”
The man nodded and put a hand gently to a tree on his left to steady him. Several men put their hands again to the hilt of their sharp curved daggers. A hard life and a quick tongue that could easier be cut out had kept their mistrust of any hostile movement sharp and alive. They would welcome strangers when the stranger had been proven unto them.
The old man with the rude white tunic motioned for his people to sit down. The gathering of companions, about fifty peasants in all, settled to the ground as one, with a whisper of hand-woven cloth and sleepy babies who cracked one eye open to look inquiringly at their mothers and then to squirm into a more comfortable sleeping position. The man paced before the good folk and a shivering overtook his body. The people watched him with intense eyes, fearful of the tales these kingdom-dwellers brought with them into the Hinterlands. Long had King Wenceslas persecuted the innocent for a crime called Shaddai-Trust, a religion based upon the prophecies of twelve anointed storytellers who had long traveled the moors and heaths and highlands, and the King’s lands, spreading blaspheming beliefs about a New King who would save them all from the oppression that loomed dark and horrible before them.
Tales had reached the Hinterlanders of radicals who cried their message out in the streets and were stoned for it. “The King will not tolerate speech against him!” shouted the angry guards. Sometimes the Crescentfolk and Warwicks took part in the increasing number of floggings, imprisonment sentences and houses set afire…and yet sometimes they fought against the guard, though usually such action resulted in them being thrown into the Crescent jail and forgotten, left there with no food and no water, and a thin blanket to shield them from the harsh Greenleaftime winters that ravaged the countrysides and mountain ranges. The Hinterlanders were not blind to the actions of the imperial Majesty. Many of them knew such secrets as could never be revealed without a sudden death following the illegal words.
Slowly, slowly, as if it pained him to talk so of his past life, the man began his story.
“I am from the village-kingdom of Warwick, the adjacent conquered-lands of King Wenceslas the Second. I worked as a farmer in his fields before being drafted most violently into his army.” Angry muttering was heard throughout the group of outcasts, but the old man stamped his staff on the mossy ground and they slowly died away.
“Let him speak without molestation,” the old man admonished gently. The people nodded their assent and the man continued.
“I did not wish to serve in the King’s army; mark those words carefully, good folk, it was not my wish to vow servitude to the King.” The people nodded knowingly. The man’s story was not a new one to them.
“In the beginning, when I refused, my dear young wife, who was soon to bear a child for me, and I were shocked to hear the King’s men threaten me with torture if I did not allow myself to serve the King like some poor captured beast who is not possessing of feelings and responsibility.” Several women muttered angrily. Here in the Hinterlands, they were encouraged to stand firm with their men and fight for the right of mankind to make use of their free will. “They…” the man’s voice was choked with a sudden onslaught of regret, “…they torched the house and slaughtered our livestock. I still refused and my dear young wife stood firm to my decision, though she sobbed for the unknown fate of our dear child, still safe within her womb. The guards took us away and bodily drug us to a crumbling temple outside of the village…my fellow Warwicks stood by and watched. Some of them laughed and threw rotting vegetables at my wife and I as they took us. I tried to shield her but one of the stronger guards took me and slung me over the back of his horse so I could do nothing for her but to let her walk in shame, no matter how fiercely I kicked and cursed the King.” The Hinterlanders were shocked into a tense silence. The persecution was getting worse. The people stood in pairs or alone now, instead of a ferociously dynamic single force. The man drew an unsteady breath and, shaking his head against the memories he had need of relieving for fear they kill him in their sharpness and horrible detail, began talking in a low voice.
“After the guards drug us to the temple, an ancient building dedicated to King Wenceslas the First, they chained me to the wall and made me watch as…” a tear slipped down his cheek into the dirt, “…they made me watch as they struck my wife again and again with the flats of their swords. I cried out, begging them to spare her the pain and release the wrath they bore against me, but they paced back and forth in front of me, saying how they would attend to me later on if I continued in my rebellion. I screamed out that I would serve the King; perhaps it was wrong of me to break. My wife, even before she was given to me on our wedding day, vowed to stand beside me in every right decision fate saw fit to send to my walk in life. I knew she would not wish me to serve the King even though both our deaths could hang in the balance of those words, those sweet words of faith and refusal…” The man leaned his forehead against the tree and sobbed uncontrollably. Many of the Hinterlanders cried with him. It was too terrible, the words he needed to speak but could not. The old man got up, leaning heavily upon his staff, and wrapped his arms around the shaking shoulders. The man choked and gasped, and was finally able to resume the tale.
“But I was too late.” A sigh of grief rippled through the outcasts. One little boy buried his head into his mother’s lap and burst into tears. Several pairs of sweethearts held the other’s hands and leaned their heads to rest on each other’s hearts. “My wife died even as I said the words. I…I can still recall the terrible laughter of the guards as they unchained my limp form, too stunned to struggle any longer, heaved me onto a horse’s back and hit my shoulders with their swords, the same swords that had killed my dear young wife, and dubbed me into the King’s service. I hated the ache in my shoulders that remained for several hours as the horse trotted along the highway, bouncing over the rocks and gravel without a care for what was going to happen to his rider. I was brought before the King, who chastised me for resenting his imperial will.” The man looked over at the Hinterlanders, a blaze leaping into his eyes. “Think on it, folk, he chastised me for abusing his guards and not wishing to come under his service.” The man snarled at his own words and growled, “As if he were some all-powerful deity!” The old man gave the stranger one last squeeze to his arm and sat back down amongst the Hinterlanders.
“That night I was given a cell within Wenceslas’s castle and several worn blankets. I sobbed pitiful tears for my dear beloved wife but to no avail; nothing was going to bring her back. The guards on shift outside looked into my room and laughed to see me there, lying helpless and broken-hearted. There suddenly flamed into my heart such a burning hatred against the guards that I felt that, had someone handed me a dagger, I could have stabbed the evil ones who had so destroyed my joyous life. I had been happy with my dear wife, and now look at me.” The Hinterlanders did so, soberly, and the troubled man before them gradually became like a brother to them, deep within their hearts. Yes, they thought to themselves, we could accept this man as one of us.
“I began my training as one of the King’s men with the spiritual stability of a fish learning how to walk upon the dry earth. I loathed every moment of it from the bottom of my tormented heart, and I made sure to let them know it. I rebelled orders and tried to run away.” The man’s eyes got a fiery, wild look in them. “I quickly became an outcast amongst the other soldiers, yet somehow I thrived upon their scorning of me. I was impassioned to defy them. Perhaps it was wrong, I know not. Yet I could not recall my dear wife’s groans as they beat her again, and again, and again with the flat of their blades, those horrible silver swords, and not feel a burning desire to rebel against every command given to me there. It kept me alive. Do you have any idea what a soldier’s life is like within the strong camp walls?” The Hinterlanders bowed their heads.
“Yes, we have heard some things,” said the old man. He smoothed his white tunic and pulled at his beard. “They torment those who do not fall into obedience with the King’s will.”
The man nodded and said, his voice coated with bitterness, “Aye, curse the beasts; they torment them. I caused disruption within the camp because I was the only one who would dare defy Wenceslas. They could not understand why I persisted in being a rebel after every stern lecture and every night I went to sleep in my cell deprived of meals. But I loved it all. The degradation of my body in defiance to the King was like the renewal of my soul.”
The Hinterlanders nodded soberly. They knew what it was like to live off hatred. Yet it was not their way and they longed at that very moment to teach the young man how to live and love instead of hate and die.
“Soon they began to take drastic measure to force me into submission. Look well upon what I am about to show you, so you can fully know the King’s Evil.” The man turned and pulled his shirt from his back. The Hinterlanders gasped as they saw the young man’s back; every square inch of flesh had been criss-crossed with a sharp whip. Hi whole back was a twisted muddle of loose, rotting flesh and the semi-healed whiplashes of many a month ago. The healer amongst the company of outcasts clucked to herself and began rummaging in her herb pouch. The children hid their faces in fear and disgust. The old man started backwards and carefully put his hand to the stranger’s shoulder, noticing for the first time a tensing on his muscle underneath the leathery hand.
“You have felt the Truth, my son,” said the old man. “We welcome you amongst the Shaddai-Trusters.” |
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